Before the age of Google, recruiters would rely primarily on phone calls to references to vet job applicants. Today, this process is almost obsolete, thanks to the fact that the Internet now offers easy access to a wealth of information about most people. To that end, Google has effectively replaced the résumé by delivering immediate results pulled from social networks and a multitude of other resources.

It’s sometimes said these days that privacy is dead, but that’s not necessarily true. Instead, it’s the steps you take to protect your identity and build your own personal brand that can make the Internet a truly powerful tool. By actively managing your own online reputation, you’ll have the power to establish a name for yourself by ensuring that, when recruiters see your name appear in Google, it’s accompanied by positive information and glowing references.

Chances are, there’s already some information about you online, even if you’ve always stayed clear of social media. You can run a quick search for your name on Google or Bing to find out. If nothing appears on the first few pages, then you don’t have any personal brand at all, which is not ideal either if you want to maximize your career opportunities. If on the other hand, there’s information about you that you’d rather not have appearing on the first page, then it’s time to take steps to win back control over your reputation.

Maintaining a Professional Presence

Many people are irresponsible in the way they use social media, often without giving a second thought to their professional presence online. Frequently, they take privacy settings for granted, despite the fact they’re becoming more meaningless by the day. That’s why you should always be mindful of what you post on Facebook and other networks, regardless of how robust you think your privacy settings might be.

Your future career opportunities depend on a great deal on your professional image online. With that in mind, even something as innocent as an innocuous party photo appearing in the Google search results can be enough to put would-be recruiters off. That’s why you should always be wary of what you post. If there’s anything that might not be considered employer-friendly on any public profiles, your professional image could suffer severely.

When you’re looking for career opportunities, it’s almost as bad to have no online presence at all than one that’s tarnished by inappropriate content. An empty LinkedIn profile, for example, hardly looks very professional. Even so, a bare-bones profile will still show up on Google, since it indexes everything on the social network. By making sure your LinkedIn profile is padded out with a professional-sounding résumé, career experience, and endorsements, you’ll be well on your way to developing your personal brand and having it appear at the top of the Google search results.

You can take your personal branding a step further by publishing articles, either on the LinkedIn platform itself, on a personal blog or elsewhere. By writing articles, you’ll have more content for Google to index. Just make sure you include your full name as the author, accompanied by a link to a page about you, such as your LinkedIn profile. Once you’ve gotten control over your own name, you can go even further by writing about topics you specialize in and targeting relevant keywords to expand your visibility in the search engines.

The Importance of Curating and Monitoring

There are two questions you should always be asking when considering your online reputation:

• Are you findable?
• Does your personal branding fit with its intended audience?

These questions are critical when it comes to building and protecting your reputation, as well as for maintaining the consistency and relevancy of your personal brand. By using a reputation monitoring solution, you’ll receive real-time alerts when someone mentions your name on a public forum or social network. You’ll also be able to keep track of where your name is appearing in search results on Google and other major search engines. By monitoring this information, you’ll be better equipped to assess your social influence and mitigate any potentially defamatory content before it can become a serious problem.